Wan Zheng raised his finger, stained with his own blood.
Sticky… he suddenly thought, and there was also a faintly pleasant scent to it.
Had he become a weirdo?
Setting aside such frivolous thoughts, Wan Zheng focused on the touch of the wound, trying to check how severe the hit had been on his skin.
It was painful when he poked at it, but not enough to kill a person.
Not far away, out of the corner of Wan Zheng's eye, he spotted a blood-stained branch of firewood.
It's as thick as a grown man's arm. It was probably used for cooking.
Oh, the hard evidence was still here.
This was the very tool the original Wan Zheng's wife had used.
The husband and wife had fought again tonight in this very room, and it ended in an unfavorable way.
Original Wan Zheng stumbled home with a jar of brothel's alcohol in his hand, drunk and reeking of cheap liquor.
His clouded eyes glimmered with the dark, restless hunger, wild and burning with unspent lust as he staggered toward his wife, My Ruying.
Mu Ruying had only just returned from the mountain, her body sore from tending the rice fields and searching for wild vegetables.
She tried to resist the original Wan Zheng, her voice trembling as she begged him.
"Please Husband… I am two weeks pregnant now. We cannot do this, Ah Zheng."
Her persistent refusal only fueled the other party's rage.
Rejected once more by the wife he had never wanted to marry, Wan Zheng's face twisted with anger.
"You whore! That's not my son, not mine! Who did you share your c-nt with, you peasant woman!"
The news of another life growing inside his unwanted wife was not good news to the original Wan Zheng.
Instead, it only ignited more of his anger.
In his drunken fury, he grabbed the wooden stick meant for beatings and struck Mu Ruying again.
He didn't forget to curse, blame, and insult his unwanted wife.
He kept calling her a whore and a breeding cow who kept bearing children he didn't even want.
Mu Ruying was an arranged wife to the original Wan Zheng. She is a young woman who had grown up innocently in Cangwei Village all her life, weak and timid.
Whenever her husband grew angry and started beating her, she never dared to fight back.
In Mu Ruying's heart and mind, she had seen that wives in their village were beaten everyday whenever their husbands were dissatisfied.
So, to Mu Ruying, who had never seen the world, being beaten had become something normal for a wife.
To the people of this ancient era, it was considered a common thing in the villages.
Mu Ruying could endure the pain of physical abuse from her husband.
But when the original Wan Zheng mentioned selling their youngest twins, she snapped.
She was so shocked that he would even think of selling his own sons.
Mu Ruying had always believed that, even if her husband was an alcoholic, a gambler, and a brute who beat the family.
The other party would never dare to sell their children.
Mu Ruying cried and begged miserably, even kneeling to hug her husband's trousers, but the original Wan Zheng was a sadistic bastard.
The man's resolute decision to sell their children as servants to a noble family in town drove her to fight back with all her strength.
In the struggle, Mu Ruying accidentally killed her husband.
That what she thought so.
Scared and terrified, she had done something unforgivable in the eyes of the world, and Mu Ruying ran away.
Pale and ghastly, she trembled making her way toward her parents' house at the end of the village.
Mu Ruying held on to one belief, that her father and mother would help her.
What Mu Ruying didn't know was that when she left, the original Wan Zheng was not actually dead.
He was still awake, feeling the pain of being hit on the head and cursing his unwanted wife weakly.
It was because of the alcohol clouding his mind that he soon drifted into sleep.
Three minutes later, the original Wang Zhen sank into a terrible nightmare.
Later, Kael's soul entered the body, the original soul unknowingly erased.
"Father…" A child's careful voice called from outside the door, and Wang Zheng knew it was one of his new children.
"Come in." With that permission, the door opened slowly, deliberate and cautious.
As if the child feared that the owner of the room, his own father Wan Zheng, might get angry.
"Father… water." Under the dim light, the child's thin hands shook.
No matter how much the child tried to hide his fear, in the end he was still just a child. It was clearly visible to the new soul inside his biological father.
Wan Zheng took the mud bowl of water from the boy, who flinched as he drew close. He ignored it but took note, still bringing the bowl to moisten his throat for relief.
Knowing the child dared not look at him.
Wan Zheng decided to inquire about Mu Ruying.
"Where's your mother?"
"Mother…" The boy seemed to stiffen at his father's question about his mother.
He suddenly became alert, his heart beating faster with nervousness, and his small hands curled into fists at his sides as he raised his guard.
Biting his lower lip in distress, the child immediately knelt on the dirt to beg. He clung to Wan Zheng's leg, pleading in a broken voice.
"Please, father… don't hurt my mother. It was an accident… an accident. My mother didn't mean it. My mother didn't want to do it… please, please don't hurt her anymore."
"Woohoo… don't beat... don't beat my mother anymore, she's hurt, very hurt." Tears began to fall, and snot streaked his dirty face, making his voice almost unintelligible.
The child didn't know where he found the courage to confront his big father, but he couldn't bear to let his mother be beaten any further.
Even if he understood that what his mother had done was not right,
"Please… please, Father." Hearing no response, he lifted his tear-streaked face, pitiful eyes full of desperation.
"Father… you can sell me, sell me!"
Yes, that's it!
He remembered hearing it earlier, his big father was planning to sell his little brothers.
As long as he could take their place and prevent his mother from being beaten anymore, he was willing to do it.
"As long as my father can sell me, and don't hurt my mother…I am...willing to be the noble's servant wohohohooo.."